87. Briscoe, Two Decades of Change in a Bangladeshi Village, Econ&Political Weekly 2001, Reprinted In
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Two Decades of Change in a Bangladeshi Village Author(s): John Briscoe Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 36, No. 40 (Oct. 6-12, 2001), pp. 3823-3825+3827- 3828 Published by: Economic and Political Weekly Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4411199 Accessed: 31/05/2009 20:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=epw. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Economic and Political Weekly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic and Political Weekly. http://www.jstor.org I Perspectives billowing white - and rose-colored sails, Two Decades of Change going to harvest paddy in the Sylhet Depression. The flotilla would return weeks later, with the hulls now weighted down with the grain which was the cur- in a BangladeshiVillage rency for their work. Behind this beauty lurked a reality of low productivity, vul- This descriptionof a revisit to village Fatepur turns on its head nerability and suffering. Harsh as this life was in general, it was several existing, stereotypical notions of what constitutes much harsher still for the landless and the developmentin Bangladesh. The villagers' assessment of what minority (Hindu) fishermen. In the 1970s counts - old-fashionedinvestments in water control and transport there were still remnants of the feudal 'zamindar' with its of infrastructure,as principal agents of progress - is in striking system, protection some poor people through patron-client contrast to opinions andfacts cited by NGOs and accepted as relationships. But observing village life in reality by many donor institutions.More importantlyprogress has Fatepurwas like reading Marx and Engels been possible, despite several extraneous contributingfactors, due on 19th century Europe - these paternal- to the and demonstrated the istic relationships were rapidly being ingenuity vitality by people. superseded by the "naked, shameless and direct exploitation of the market". This JOHNBRISCOE Twenty-one years ago life there was was not pretty, either in form (often of nasty, brutish and short. Malnutrition and uninhibited violence) or in outcome (with wenty-two years ago I lived for a disease were daily facts of life - life the poor forced below the margin of sub- year in the village of Fatepur,lo- expectancy was less than 50 years. Social sistence). During my year in the village, cated on an island where the braided and political upheavals were endemic. a number of Hindu fishing families were distributariesof the world's second larg- These included the devastating Bengal compelled, at knife-point, to sell their est river system usually merge and some- famine precipitated by the British in 1943 meagre plots to one of the more aggressive times - as in this year's catastrophic floods (and recalled vividly by many in the vil- families in the village. The Hindu fishing - collide. My stay in Fatepur was a pro- lage), the India-Pakistan war of 1965, the community was literally being forced into found andradicalising experience, in which war of independence in 1971 and the the river, with some families living for I learned first-hand of the degrading and subsequent years of political instability. months on end with a foot of water cov- dehumanising struggle for survival in one Each upheaval had exacted a terribleprice, ering the floor of their make-shift shacks. of the poorest areas of the world. What with the vulnerable most directly affected. I saw and learned changed the course of Fatepur in 1998 my life. Most immediately it led to me Fatepur in 1977 taking a public position against the ways In preparationfor my visit, I re-read the in which foreign aid worked in Bangladesh, In 1977 Fatepurwas underseveral metres reams of notes I had taken during my 1977 being fired from my job, and subsequently of water for four months every year, and stay in the village. I formulated a set of being declared a 'persona-non-grata' in always isolated from the rest of the world. issues I would discuss with the families the country. It also led me to search for The nearest market was one hour away by - drawn from all strata of Fatepur society 'a better way' and to several years as a country boat; there was not even a tea stall - I had known best. I had predicted in the solidarity worker in the ministry of water in the village. I once went to the market late 1970s thatwithout revolutionarysocial of the newly-independentMarxist-Leninist town with a woman and her sick child, and political change the (then) proposed Peoples' republic of Mozambique. After and learned thatat the age of 30 the woman flood control and irrigation project would a long and unpredicted intellectual and was leaving the village for the first time. have massively negative consequences for emotional journey, it eventually led to me Technology was primitive. This involved the poor and for the environment. Since working in the World Bank. backbreaking and inhuman work: for the project had, in fact, been completed For years I have thought about going instance, barges going upriver would be in the late 1980s, I went back with con- back to Fatepur, to visit my many friends pulled by teams of 'human mules' who siderable trepidation. there, and to see how their lives had trudged along towpaths on the muddy What I found astounded me. I found a changed. As a water engineer, there was banks. In other instances the results were society dramatically different both from a professional curiosity, too, since a 60 stunningly beautiful. In the monsoon the one I knew and the one I anticipated. kilometre flood protection embankment months, the flooded fields were trans- Today the people of Fatepur lead lives was built around the island in the late formed into an emerald-green sea by the which are incomparably better than they 1980s. I returned to Fatepur for a week exuberant but low-yielding indigenous were twenty years ago. These improve- in 1998, staying with the family that had floating rice. And each winter the Meghna ments are manifested in a myriad of ways been my host 22 years earlier. I appreciate river would become a picture postcard, as - in the obvious physical health of most the opportunity to share my impressions the workers of Fatepur would join a flo- people; in the rarity of a smallpox-scarred with you. tilla of elegant wooden boats, all under face; in the quality of people's clothes; in Economicand Political Weekly October6, 2001 3823 the quality of their houses, water supply incomesare 50 per cent higher,and death of theisland; and several families migrated and toilets; in the number of schools and rates for childrenare a third less. to India.I metwith a numberof the Hindu attendance at these; in the emergence of Whatis evenmore remarkable (and quite fishing families in Balu Char.They, like women into the public domain; in the theopposite of mypredictions in the 1970s), theirfellow-fishermen elsewhere, caught intensity of work both on the land and in is thatthe poor have shared in thisprogress. fewerfish now thanthey had 20 yearsago. the new, bustling, markets; in the use of The critical factor has been a sharp in- And they (correctly)saw the increasein modern techniques for agriculture, fish creasein thedemand for labour,as a result embankmentsas a factor which contrib- farming and transport.While the techno- of moreintensive and productive agricul- uted to the decline of the catch.But they logical nirvana painted on the rickshaws ture. And as landownershave become also confirmedthat the changes in Fatepur of Dhaka is not yet a reality, the changes richer,they have chosen to do less farm hadbenefited them in indirectways. While are immense! workthemselves, as was alreadyincipient the decline in fish productionfrom the in 1977.At thattime my hostin the village river has been offset by increasesin cul- Making a Difference would introduceme by recitingmy edu- tivated fish production,there is a strong cational qualifications,to which the in- preferencefor river fish, which conse- These changes in Fatepur are, in part, credulouslistener would invariablyask: quently now sell at higher prices. The a reflection of changes which have hap- "Ifhe's reallyso well educated,then what Hindufishing families had also faced the pened throughout Bangladesh. Although is he doing here?"Today this preference inevitableand diversifiedout of fishing the average person still lives on less than for non-farmwork is exemplifiedby the into other occupations,such as rickshaw a dollar a day, during the past two decades zamindarfamily of Fatepur.In 1977, al- pullingand marketing, opportunities which national per capita income has almost though they were diversifying into the existed because of the buoyanteconomy doubled, infant mortality has declined by contractingand services businesses, the of the island.Available data provide only a half and the average woman lives 15 zamindarfamily lived in the village and one statisticwhich can be used to assess yearslonger.